For one great Queen who sits in majesty,

Untouched, austere, upon a golden throne,

The like whose loveliness was never known

Of ebony and rose and ivory,—

For her you weave a broidered tapestry,

Rife with rich stains of every color-tone

Inwrought; while she immovable as stone

But watches pitiless and silently.

Yet, should this Queen of Beauty lift her arm

And take your broidered web,—ah, then the prize,

The vast reward of all the scars and shame,

For in the moment as a mystic charm

The cloth is changed to porphyry, and lies

Forever on her breast a frozen flame!